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Um, trust me. I went there and my little brother goes there.
If you go to the Junior High, you CAN ONLY try out in eight grade. The average is 6 spots to get in.
In seventh grade, it goes by what AREA for the Junior High you live in.
I can't decipher what you are saying. My summary of the entrance procedure comes directly from Oxford's website. It is clearly spelled out in plain English. Anyone who is confused at this point can go there and look for themselves.
That is so very sad about the lack of charter schools. We so badly want to move as my husband's family lives there. Our hugest concern is just what our kids will be exposed to once we arrive. We also know that the Public Schools out there are getting morally corrupt because of what they are starting to teach. They are very anti-family or anything religious. At least in the Midwest States you can kind of sneak it in a little! Maybe with all the changes in the school system right now, more Private/Charter Schools will strart cropping up. I can tell you this, if there are any concervative families in the OC like it's beeb stated, they won't stand for their kids learning about something that conflicts with what they believe to be. Home schools wouldn't be an option for those 2 parent working families just trying to keep above ground financially. Of course, then it would be hard for them to afford tuition on top of that if they went the Private route. Maybe this is the real reason you don't see them out there, just another expense that nobody can afford except the elite. I could see more and more moving out for their kids sake. Schools aren't what they were even just 10 short years ago, and you'd have to be living in a cellar not to see the changes around us in our culture for the worst.
The thing is that there are plenty of fine schools in affordable areas in OC. Typically charter schools are created because people are unhappy with the current public school situation, and OC really doesn't have much a problem there. You have an arts high school and you have private schools(mostly religious) if you don't like the education provided by the public schools. Otherwise, if the kids are truely intelligent and work hard, there are advanced programs at most schools for these kids and if you have a certain GPA or graduate into a certain percentage in the school, you are guaranteed admission into the Cal State or UC state college systems, which are both affordable(especially the CSUs) and very well respected in private industry.
I believe that what Bh says is right. There are really no other options out here other than public or private. Take it or leave it.
Personally I have seen a decline in the atmosphere of even our local high school in the last 4 years. Too many kids, not enough teachers, I am not liking it. We are trying to relocate to the east coast ,and have been for a couple of years. I do not like the school system out here at all and if we were offered a relocation package to go back east we would jump at the chance. That said, I am sure there are people freezing their butts off back there thinking the same thing of moving west. I am strictly concerned with my kids education at this point, the weather is a mute point to me. If you have a great school where you live, and have no hope of finding one remotely similar I would stay put until your child is out of school, then go wherever you want.
Lanie32 I couldn't agree with you more. CA schools are not family friendly. Traditional values have been replaced by a code based on political correctness (environmental worship, multicultural "awareness", tolerance, self esteem boosting, etc). Not only are there few charter schools in OC there are relatively few throughout the state. The charter schools that you do find are small and specialized (for drop out kids, special needs kids, home school kids, etc). San Diego county has one large charter high school (Escondido Charter High) and Granada Hills has another. My guess is that the education bureaucrats in CA have successfully blocked the charter movement from taking off compared to say Colorado where there are lots of good charter schools. And I see no chance of charter schools expanding much in CA considering that Democrats have a monopoly on state polictics and the teachers union is their largest campaign contributor.
The present system is a mess. We homeschooled our two boys through 9th and 3rd grade respectively. It was a mistake. Once we moved somewhere with good schools it became apparent how far behind they had fallen in addition to their not getting used to being around other kids.
You will hear lots of people tell you that their local school is great. Not true. They have never looiked at the test scores for their local school or they would see that 40% - 50% of the kids fail math and Englsh even in the best schools.
And unless you're looking for a religious school you won't even find that much choice in private schools (at the high school level). I've looked hard at this issue for our family. Studied just about every school district in the state then moved to Colorado.
I am going to try to make this as clear as possible because you keep misinterpreting the data. Do you think Greatschools.net is wrong and you know more than them? Are they wrong to rate Mission Viejo High School for example as a 9/10? Are the kids failing at MV High like you say? Are all the Colorado schools that much better than schools here?
Lets see: First off you are trying to compare two completly different tests. The California State Testing (CST) is 100% different than the Colorado State Assessment Program (CSAP). You can not compare two different tests.
Also, in California the tests are administered to the class the students are currently enrolled in. So, they could receive anything from algebra I, basic math, algebra II, geometry, higher level math etc... in math classes. They receive US History, World History, Geography, etc.. for social science and the specific types of each subject go on and on. So in one California high school, no kid could be receiving the same exact test, they will have a varying set of tests for each class they are currently enrolled in for each subject. Consequently, more advanced students are not going to be grouped together with less advanced students to pull up the percent that are proficient like in Colorado. Greatschools.net knows this and considers this when ranking schools.
In Colorado all the students take the same exact test with reading, writing, and math. The test is not specific to the class the students are in. They are not given a test in social science like in California either and science is only in the tenth grade year. The point is that the Colorado State Testing is way way way way easier for students to pass. The test has to be dumbed down so it is at the same level as the students in the lowest level classes in the school. So, this means algebra and basic math is the test all ninth graders will receive, all of them. This is different than California because everyone takes the same test rather than one specific to their class. In California, an algebra II student has to take algebra II for his test, where that same algebra II student in Colorado gets to take just regular algebra I. Think about how much easier that is for the kid! Thus in Colorado, with advanced students grouped together with average students and not so good students, the scores are more balanced than in California. In California, where you may look at an algebra class that only has 50% passing and say that is horrible, this algebra class lacks the advanced kids taking higher level math that the Colorado school had in the same test.
Lets compare two 9/10 high school that are respected: Mission Viejo High School and Liberty High School in Colorado Springs, CO.
At Liberty High School: In 9th grade: 84% passed math, 68% passed writing, and 56% passed math. Oh, but wait, this is a 9/10 school!!!! They must be wrong, over 40% of the students will fail math in 9th grade!!!! Colorado is the worst state in the world!!!! Well, who do I sound like??? And that is pretty bad considering all students took the same test, advanced ones and not advanced ones.
In tenth grade, only 41% passed math, so 59% failed!!!!! Sounds bad to me.
Now Mission Viejo High School:
The results are way harder to come out with because the tests are spread out over all the subjects. It isn't just "math", it is algebra, geometry, etc...
In 9th grade:
81% of students enrolled in algebra II passed the algebra II test
22% passed general math (6th and 7th grade)- only a small amount of kids, usually very very struggling students take this class as these are passed by 99% of kids in middle school.
40% of students enrolled in algebra I passed the test. - Now this is not such a great number, but if this was Colorado, all the algebra II kids would be included in this data section. This would significantly boost the score, probably pushing it over 60%, a score that would beat Liberty High School.
78% of students passed geometry that were enrolled in this class. You must add these students to the algebra I score too to get a score that would represent Colorado's "math section".
69% of the students passed English, lower than Liberty's reading and writing scores.
To compare the sciences, MV had 69% pass general science, while Liberty High School had 61% pass.
So, I honestly don't see how Liberty High School, a 9/10 in Colorado, is any better than Mission Viejo High School, a 9/10 in California.
California students that are college bound obviously do much better also. The University of California system did not become the best public university system without good students coming in from California high schools. What is Colorado's best university?? University of Colorado at Boulder, big whoop, it is ranked number 79, way after the California public universities. Sure the UC schools are competitive, but even average grades can get a student into UC Santa Cruz, a better school than Boulder.
So, when my student has the opportunity to graduate as an advanced student and has the opportunity to go to UC Berkley or UCLA, two of the most prestigious universities in the nation and definitely of public universities, and pay in state tuition, I hope you are glad you took those opportunities from your children. Anyone with kids that want to go to a very good university from Colorado does not have the option to going to an "in state tuition" school, they have to leave their home state, and move far away to another university where they will pay out of state tuition in somewhere like California.
I take the test scores at face value. I do not try to read things into them. In your example you say that 40% of those at Mission Viejo High School (one of the best in CA) passed their algebra test. But you say the number would have been higher if other advanced students had taken the test. I say that all the kids should pass the algebra test and we should not try to second guess how the results would come out if different kids had taken the test.
I don't know why you compare CA schools to CO schools. I don't know that CO public schools are much better. But they couldn't be much worse as California schools rank at or near the bottom among all states. You say that Mission Viejo HS ranks 9 out of 10. So what? That's just saying it is the best out of a poor group.
I did say that Colorado has more good charter schools because CO is not hindered by a one-party political system that is beholding to the teachers union. Charter schools do not have to hire teachers union members. So the teachers union pays the CA politicos to keep charter schools from expanding.
Another measure of the lousy California school system is to look at what happens when these kids get to college. Over 50% of all freshmen entering CA colleges must take remedial math. Their high school experience was so poor that it must be repeated.
In addition the test scores that we are using are being monkeyed around with by the bureaucrats. The tests are being dumbed down each year to make them easier. That way the bureaucrats hope CA parents won't fuss so much about low scores and a failing education system,.
It's not the bureaucrats job to educate our kids. The teachers are there and they want to teach, but many kids don't apply themselves. Parenting is definitely an issue in CA. Too many single parents, too many latchkey kids.
May not be the bureaucrats job to stand in the classroom and teach mutiplcation tables but they should not stand in the way either. The bureaucrats, bribed by the teachers union, have successfully stopped the only thing that will improve the California (and America's) schools. That is competition. So long as the public schools have a monopoly on teaching your lids they have no reason to improve. They will continue to put their own interests first.
Would you be happy buying a car if there were only one place to get it? Why are your kids less important? Look at the cars we had in the 1970's before there was competition.
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